Category: Announcements

BU IS&T is happy to announce that we have moved up to a site-wide, unlimited-user licence for NVivo, our software for qualitative data analysis. Formerly, we were limited to 500 licences. It is now available to the entire community, and you should feel free to download it as many times as you like as long as you remain affiliated with BU. We highly encourage you to inform your students about Nvivo as well.

In addition, we expect to have another educational technologist position open later this year, relating to lecture capture and audience response systems. If you apply for the LMS position, you can be considered for that position as well (if you are willing to start later). Please forward this invitation to anyone whom you think might be interested in any of these positions.

IS&T ETTO is exploring the possibility of a user group for faculty and staff working with NVivo, and perhaps other data-analysis software such as Qualtrics, to meet and share ideas and experiences. We’re trying to gauge interest in this possibility. If you think you might be interested, please take our survey and let us know what you think.

As part of the Learning Management System (LMS) investigation, the LMS Steering Committee will be conducting several live demonstrations from vendors, including our current LMS, Blackboard. All faculty and academic staff are invited to attend these sessions, but we ask that you register in advance so we can plan accordingly.

Following the Blackboard demonstration on Monday, May 4 we will be hosting our fourth annual Blackboard Boot Camp. This annual event gives faculty an opportunity to hear from their colleagues and to learn more about what our current Learning Management System has to offer. Seating is limited, so please be sure to register in advance.

We look forward to seeing you! Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

As part of our ongoing investigation into our platforms for learning management and ePortfolio, IS&T is conducting a survey about the Digication ePortfolio system and the extent to which it meets faculty and other user needs. Please take the survey and let us know your thoughts. We want to hear from you even if you don’t use Digication; we’d like to know why.

Educational Technology, Training and Outreach has a website available outlining our current investigation into options for a learning management system (currently Blackboard). The site will also have details about our related investigation into an ePortfolio system (currently Digication). This site should not be taken to mean that BU is dissatisfied with either Blackboard or Digication, only that we are undertaking a periodic review to confirm whether or not our current systems remain the best ones.

If you’re thinking about adopting NVivo in your classes, you can download the NVivo Teacher’s Guide from the official NVivo website. It contains modules introducing various aspects of NVivo to students, such as working with interviews and working with PDFs.

BU wants to hear faculty opinions about Blackboard and competing learning management systems. We are conducting a review project to determine whether we will stick with Blackboard in the years to come, or adopt an alternate system. We want your opinions as faculty members, and we have set up focus groups on March 18th and 19th so that we can hear them. Light refreshments will be served.

If you’d like to attend a focus group, please register online. Please pass this link along to any faculty member(s) who may be interested in participating. We welcome input from any faculty at all levels.

BU Google Apps (including Gmail, Google Drive, Google Sites and more) now include unlimited amounts of storage space. Google Drive makes an excellent space to store large files that are difficult to email or fit on a server. If you don’t yet have a BU Google account, you can sign up for one on our account creation page.

QSR International, the makers of NVivo, will be providing a free March 9 teaching session at BU built around the NVivo Teacher’s Guide. This resource is used by professors worldwide. To enhance the experience for both you and your students, QSR International is offering a more in-depth look into the pedagogy behind the guide as well as possible implementation options.

The NVivo Teacher’s Guide is designed by an educator to make it easier for teaching staff to incorporate NVivo into higher education coursework, and flexible enough to fit various teaching styles, approaches and disciplines. Delivered modularly, you can choose to work with the resources that best suit your course. And, each module is accompanied by a ready-to-go NVivo project, enabling practical learning. The currently available modules are built around NVivo 10 for Windows.

This session will be led by Dr. Stuart Robertson, the developer of The NVivo Teacher’s Guide. More